Watch Where You Walk… You Might Step On a Tune!
The words of caution below, attributed to the composer, Johannes Brahms, are the kind of warning that can lift one’s spirits.
The world is so full of tunes
you have to watch where you walk
else you might step on them.
Can’t you see Brahms, arms clasped behind his back in what contemporaries described as a consistent gesture, walking in the hills outside his home town of Hamburg, Germany, or climbing mountains in Switzerland on vacation with his father? How many tunes there are to hear! The melody of the Alpine shepherd’s horn (said to become the horn call soaring over strings, like sun breaking through clouds, that transfigures the introduction of Brahms’ First Symphony finale)…the rustling of wind among tall grasses…the rhythmic crack of footsteps on hard-packed earth… (more…)
A recent front-page article in The New York Times was entitled, “In Battle, Hunches Prove to be Valuable Assets.” The article—continuing from the front page of the newspaper to take up the full page on A6—describes the research done with soldiers on subjects like “how the brain processes images, how well it reads emotions and how it manages surges in stress hormones.” Dr. Antonio Damasio, director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California, is quoted in the article: